Rabbi’s son loses passport fight

July 12, 2007 9:00am

The son of a Toronto rabbi lost a legal battle to have his Canadian passport list his birthplace as Jerusalem, Israel. Eliyahu Veffer, a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, had
argued that excluding his country of birth on his passport was a
violation of his religious beliefs and thus contrary to the Canadian
Charter of Rights.Canada’s passport office has a policy of writing the city of Jerusalem without any reference to a country, so as not to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel. During the course of the two-year court battle, the government recalled 146 passports after discovering that they had inadvertently listed Jerusalem, Israel, as a place of birth.